Leftovers

• Ben Congdon ☛ Race Report: Seattle Marathon 2025

  Last Sunday, I ran the 2025 Seattle Marathon. This was my third marathon, and I got a PR! I’m splitting this race report into two broad sections: about the course, and about my experience/training/etc.

  The Course & Event

  Candidly, I’ve avoided running the Seattle Marathon in the past because I’d heard negative things about the course layout. Previous courses spent much more time around the arboretum and University District, and routed over the 520 bridge – which does sound fun in the abstract¹, but would be monotonous for a race.

• IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Australians spent over 18,000 years on the phone in 2025

  This year, Vodafone customers made nearly 4 billion phone calls, chatting away for more than 9.9 billion minutes, the equivalent of spending approximately 18,955 years on the phone in 2025.

  New South Wales residents are Australia’s top chatterboxes, ringing in a total of 2,052,341,084 calls on the Vodafone network and spending approximately 65,846,312 hours talking away. That’s 7,516 years or over 75 centuries of conversation!

• Giles Turnbull ☛ Questions to ask at the start of any comms project

  This is a non-exhaustive list of questions I often ask at the start of comms projects. I don’t ask all of these, every time, and sometimes I ask different ones. But these are some of my favourites.

• Science

  • New York Times ☛ His Group Made World-Class Measurements of Atomic Elements

    Yuri Ralchenko led one of the oldest teams at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. The fate of some experiments hangs in the air.

  • NYPost ☛ Prehistoric artifacts found amid search for long-lost castle in Northern Ireland

    Nearly 250 schoolchildren — some from a girls' Lego construction team — and 35 adult volunteers helped search for the once-magnificent structure that has eluded archaeologists so far.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Why don’t we get more scientific breakthroughs?

    It is absolutely clear to me that large language models represent the most significant scientific breakthrough of the past fifty years. The nature of that breakthrough has far reaching implications for what is happening in science today. And I believe that the entire scientific establishment is refusing to acknowledge it.

  • Science Alert ☛ 18,000 Tracks Discovered in World's Largest Dinosaur Tracksite

    Walking, running, even swimming.

  • Science Alert ☛ Almost All Space Telescope Images Could Soon Be Contaminated, NASA Warns

    This is what half a million satellites looks like.

  • Science Alert ☛ 'Tornado' of Galaxies Could Be The Longest Spinning Structure Ever Seen

    Whee!

  • Science Alert ☛ Close Brush With 'Cosmic Dog' May Still Be Seen at Solar System's Edge

    Bad dog!

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Driving Choices Could Be Hiding Signs of Future Cognitive Decline

    It's the small things.

  • Science Alert ☛ Kimchi Targets Key Parts of Your Immune System, Study Reveals

    Add it to your menu.

  • Science Alert ☛ New Tick-Borne Disease Discovered in Dogs May Pose a Risk to Humans

    Authorities are watching closely.

  • Science Alert ☛ Black Death's Carnage Traced to a Volcanic Eruption Half a World Away

    One thing led to another...

• Career/Education

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Trump’s Education Department transfers illegal, US Senate Dems say

    More than 30 members of the U.S. Senate Democratic caucus slammed the U.S. Education Department’s plans to shift several responsibilities to other Cabinet-level agencies in a letter to Secretary Linda McMahon.

    The senators blasted the move as “outrageous,” and “illegal,” saying it circumvented appropriations law — which is how Congress exercises its power of the purse — and would “jeopardize the funding and support that tens of millions of students, teachers, and families across the country rely on.”

  • Arkansas Advocate ☛ University of Arkansas continues to modify scholarships that mention diversity

    A 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that it’s unconstitutional to use race as a selection criterion in university admissions prompted the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees to approve a resolution in January to review and modify scholarship endowment funds to comply with applicable law.

  • American Library Association ☛ Award-winning librarian and ‘Reading Rainbow’ host Mychal Threets to serve as 2026 National Library Week honorary chair

    Award-winning librarian, author, and new host of the children’s program “Reading Rainbow” Mychal Threets will serve as Honorary Chair of the American Library Association’s National Library Week, April 19-25, 2026, a weeklong celebration of the important role libraries and library workers play in schools and communities across the U.S.

  • American Library Association ☛ ALA welcomes reinstatement of all federal IMLS grants to libraries

    Today, the American Library Association (ALA) greeted an announcement by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) that it had reinstated all the agency’s grants, including those to libraries and library organizations across the country. The grant reinstatements come as a direct result of a November 21 federal court decision in a lawsuit brought against President Trump by 21 states.

  • The Register UK ☛ Glitches on video calls linked to real-world decisions

    If you didn't get your dream job, you might be able to blame your internet provider. Technical glitches on video calls in healthcare, job interviews, and parole hearings can affect real-world decisions, a study has found. The researchers suggest new technologies may even be making the problem worse.

  • Matthew Weber ☛ Life Is Just A Series Of Reboots

    With my recent unemployment, I’m returning to a blog post idea I had a few months ago. I wrote this idea down and just didn’t know how it fit, as it was during the time when I started to think more carefully about my health and getting older. Life happens, we all know this. Good things, bad things, and all the things in between. All of those things add up to make life what it is.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Franken-engine Plays Its Own Swan Song At 15k RPM

    Back during WWII, Chrysler bodged five inline-6 engines together to create the powerful A57 multibank tank engine. [Maisteer] has some high-revving inline-4 motorcycle engines he’s trying to put together too, but unlike 1940s Chrysler, he also has a trombone… and a lot more RPMs to deal with.

  • Futurism ☛ Chinese Man Unleashes Swarm of Flying Swords

    You gotta see this.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Nexperia’s standoff puts a core part of the chip supply chain under strain — U.S export controls and red tape may threaten consumer continuity without governance

    Dutch intervention, China’s retaliation, and widening U.S. controls have turned a major European component supplier into the centre of a three-way dispute.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unsure if China would buy its H200 chips if restrictions are relaxed as Beijing prioritizes homegrown Hey Hi (AI) solutions — 'We don’t know. We have no clue.' [Ed: Jensen Huang the Ponzi man. Maybe Jensen Huang can PAY China to buy "his" chips, i.e. the usual fake demand or subsidised (by oneself) "sales".]

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admits that he has no idea whether Nvidia can sell its H200 chips in China even if Washington allows the company to export them.

  • Thomas Rigby ☛ Solving for intermittent failure

    Unfortunately, the kettle has developed an intermittent failure. Sometimes, but not all times, it will just tick off leaving warm but sub-desired temperature water.

    I have a few options here, bearing in mind I am not an expert on kettles or, indeed, boiling water.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Pouring one out for Crucial

    But it was their indirect advertising that made me a lifelong customer. For as long as I could remember, Crucial had a brilliant tool on their website that would let you select your hardware manufacturer and build, and it would return the memory it supported, and how many DIMMs you could install, and in what configuration. They must have had someone on staff who’s only job was to maintain that exhaustive database; I don’t think I ever threw hardware at it that they didn’t have. It helped me so many times that I rewarded them with my business as soon as I was old enough to buy parts myself.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia government to block under-16s from social control media

    It has taken a comprehensive approach to safeguarding vulnerable groups.

  • France24 ☛ Australia leads world with under-16 social control media restriction

    Starting December 10, Australia will ban children under 16 from using social control media, with Meta already deleting underage accounts and age verification being introduced on app stores. The measure aims to protect children from cyberbullying, predators, harmful content, and addictive algorithms, with violations carrying fines of up to AUD 50 million. Parents largely welcome the move, and other countries, including Malaysia and several EU nations, are considering similar rules.

  • NPR ☛ U.S. health care is broken. Here are 3 ways it's getting worse

    One year after UnitedHealthcare's CEO was shot and killed, the crisis in U.S. health care has gotten even worse — in ways both obvious and hidden.

  • New York Times ☛ Poll Suggests Voters May Blame Republicans More if Affordable Care Act Subsidies Go Away

    About half of people covered under the Affordable Care Act say that if their health costs spike, it will have a “major impact” on how they vote in the 2026 midterm elections, a survey found.

  • New York Times ☛ Inside RFK Jr.’s Methodical Quest to Shake Up America’s Vaccine System

    The health secretary has walled himself off from government scientists and empowered fellow activists to pursue his vaccine agenda.

  • JURIST ☛ US dispatch: Luigi Mangione defense seeks to suppress backpack evidence, alleged statements in first suppression hearing

    The New York State case against Luigi Mangione, suspect of the December 4, 2024 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, saw its first evidentiary suppression hearing on Monday. The high-stakes hearings are expected to last approximately five days in total, and prosecutors said they may call close to 30 witnesses.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Doctors, lawmakers urge Gretchen Whitmer to make stand for science, vaccines

    As federal public health policies come under fire, a group of citizens, doctors and lawmakers is pressing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration to more forcefully safeguard vaccines and Medicaid.

  • Latvia ☛ Influenza levels edge closer to epidemic status in Latvia

    The incidence of influenza is increasing rapidly in Latvia, and is approaching the official threshold oat which it can be called an epidemic, the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (SPKC) indicated on December 3rd.

  • Latvia ☛ Get a smoke detector, firefighters urge public again

    Although smoke detectors are one of the simplest ways to protect your home and your life in the event of a fire, not many install them. Firefighters point out that the lack of these devices is often the reason why flames are not noticed in time. Insurers also acknowledge that public attitudes toward installing detectors remain ambiguous, Latvian Television reported on 4 December.

  • NYPost ☛ Doctors admit to performing ‘non-standard’ gender-affirming surgeries on youth — including castrations

    Doctors copped to sometimes even performing life-altering procedures with little to no assessment of an individual's mental health or gender identity, videos obtained by The Free Press show.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Delhi records more than 200,000 respiratory illness cases due to toxic air

    Levels of cancer-causing microparticles sometimes rise to as much as 60 times the UN’s daily health limits.

• Proprietary

  • Neowin ☛ Meta pulls back on its metaverse dreams with deep budget cuts

    Meta is reportedly planning to cut spending on its metaverse group by up to 30% in 2026, including its Horizon Worlds social VR platform and the Quest virtual reality headset business, according to a report by Bloomberg. The move comes as the company continues to incur heavy losses at Reality Labs, the AR/VR division behind Meta’s metaverse push.

  • The Register UK ☛ PRC spies Brickstromed their way into critical US networks

    PRC-backed goons infected at least eight government services and IT organizations with Brickstorm backdoors, according to a joint security alert from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the US National Security Agency, and the Canadian Cyber Security Centre.

  • Macworld ☛ Apple software has been bad for years, but now there's finally hope for the future

    For a few years now, something has felt off with Apple’s software design. There’s been too much emphasis on showy effects and eye-catching animations, and not enough on creating intuitive experiences that actually work for the user. But now that Apple’s design chief Alan Dye is leaving the company for new pastures at Meta, I’m hoping for a radical improvement to iPhone and Mac software–one that’s long overdue.

  • Macworld ☛ Russia blocks FaceTime in ongoing crackdown of foreign tech platforms

    According to the report, Russian communications agency Roskomnadzor justified blocking it by saying, “According to law enforcement agencies, FaceTime is being used to organise and carry out terrorist attacks in the country, recruit perpetrators, and commit fraud and other crimes against Russian citizens.” The report notes that no evidence has been presented to support the allegations.

  • Reuters ☛ Russia blocks Apple's FaceTime in mounting push against foreign tech platforms

    Russia has blocked Apple's (AAPL.O) , opens new tab video-calling app FaceTime, the state communications watchdog said on Thursday, as part of an accelerating clampdown on foreign tech platforms that authorities allege are being used for criminal activity. The move follows restrictions against Google's YouTube, Meta's (META.O) , opens new tab WhatsApp and the Telegram messaging service.

  • John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: Alan Dye Was in Tim Cook’s Blind Spot

    This was a rather memorable interview. Cook’s “What would I do? I wouldn’t be in this situation” is one of the stone-coldest lines he’s ever zinged at a rival company. (In public, that is.) That was just ice cold. Cook is a consummate diplomat. Most non-founder big company CEOs are. Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Andy Jassy — none of them are known for throwing shade, let alone sharp elbows, at competitors. Cook has made an exception, multiple times, when it comes to Facebook/Meta (and to a lesser degree, Google).

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Google's Agentic Hey Hi (AI) wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure — cache wipe turns into mass deletion event as agent apologizes: “I am absolutely devastated to hear this. I cannot express how sorry I am"

      A user used Surveillance Giant Google Antigravity to build an app, but it ended up deleting their entire D: drive instead of just their project's cache folder.

    • ACLU ☛ AI is Infringing on Your Civil Rights. Here’s How We Can Stop That

      Searching for an apartment online, applying for a loan, going through airport security, or looking up a question on a search engine – you might not think anything of these exchanges other than that they are mundane things you do, but, in many of these instances, you’re actually interacting with artificial intelligence (AI).

    • Techdirt ☛ Like Apple, Google’s AI News Tech Misinterprets Stories, Generates Gibberish Headlines

      We’ve already seen how news outlets have gotten egg on their faces by using AI “journalists” who completely make up sources, quotes, facts, and other information. But earlier this year, Apple also had to pull their major news AI system offline after it repeatedly couldn’t generate accurate headlines, and in many instances just fabricated major events that never happened (whoops!).

      Google has recently also been experimenting with letting AI generate news headlines for its Discover feature (the news page you reach by swiping right on Google Pixel phones), and the results are decidedly… mixed. The technology, once again, routinely misconstrues meaning when trying to sum up news events: [...]

    • Wired ☛ ByteDance and DeepSeek Are Placing Very Different AI Bets

      On Monday, DeepSeek released DeepSeek V3.2, another open-weight model that anyone can tinker with. The startup says it performs on par with the latest models from OpenAI and Google, and it even beats them on some key mathematics benchmarks.

    • The Register UK ☛ Server prices set to jump 15% on memory cost spike

      Major manufacturers including Dell, Lenovo, HP, and HPE are planning price increases of around 15 percent for servers and 5 percent for PCs, according to channel sources.

    • Jeff Geerling ☛ The RAM Shortage Comes for Us All

      Memory price inflation comes for us all, and if you're not affected yet, just wait.

      I was building a new PC last month using some parts I had bought earlier this year. The 64 Gigabyte T-Create DDR5 memory kit I used cost $209 then. Today? The same kit costs $650!

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Micron Shuts Down "Crucial" Consumer Brand After 29 Years

      Executive Vice President Sumit Sadana explained the move is driven by overwhelming AI demand: “The surge in data-center memory and storage has forced us to prioritize larger, strategic customers.”

      In plain terms, Micron is dropping the consumer market to feed Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and other hyperscalers building massive AI clusters.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Data Centers Are Making RAM Crushingly Expensive, Which Is Going to Skyrocket the Cost of Laptops, Tablets, and Gaming PCs

      For the past few months, RAM prices have been shooting through the roof, as the rapid buildout of AI datacenters causes an ever tightening shortage of memory chips. What was once considered to be one of the most affordable components of building a gaming rig has now doubled or even tripled in price. Prices are so volatile, in fact, that some retailers are now selling RAM kits at market prices that go up and down — or usually up and up — by the day, instead of having a fixed price tag. Or as The Verge put it: they’re being sold “like lobster.”

      And now, a new omen is casting a somehow even more ominous shadow over the future to come.

    • Futurism ☛ Waymo Just Reprogrammed Its Robotaxis to Drive Less Safely

      The new behavior is the result of an effort to make Waymos “confidently assertive,” according to Chris Ludwick, senior director of product management with Waymo. In an interview with the WSJ, Ludwick said changes were needed to avoid disruptions caused by Waymo’s previously cautious behavior.

    • Futurism ☛ Cops Stunned as Waymo Cruises Through Active Police Standoff

      Footage shared by influencer Alex Choi shows a Waymo rolling past the row of squad cars without a care in the world, coming just feet away from the driver, who was lying face down on the asphalt, ostensibly complying with police.

  • Social Control Media

    • Omicron Limited ☛ TikTok still delivering self-harm and suicidal content in France, research finds

      Within five minutes of joining TikTok, the French "teens" watched a video expressing sadness.

      Within three hours of watching that and similar videos, the TikTok For You feeds of the researcher-fabricated teenager accounts were recommending videos showcasing methods to die by suicide.

    • Daily Detroit ☛ FIRST LOOK: The RoboCop Statue Arrives In Detroit

      Sparked by a viral 2011 tweet comparing Detroit's need for a RoboCop statue to Philadelphia's Rocky statue, the project grew through massive community collaboration.

    • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Signalgate report says Hegseth created a risk to national security with cellphone messages • Georgia Recorder

      The Defense Department Inspector General’s 84-page report concluded Hegseth sent information about the “strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes.”

    • US Navy Times ☛ IG finds Hegseth risked endangering Houthi mission with Signal use

      The report, which was dated Dec. 2 and publicly released Thursday, found that Hegseth has the authority to decide whether information should be classified, and he determined the details he shared in a March 15 Signal chat “were either not classified or that he could safely declassify and use to create an ‘unclassified summary’ to provide to the Signal chat participants.”

    • The Verge ☛ Pentagon’s Signalgate report finds Pete Hegseth violated military policies

      It has been months since a group of Trump administration officials put together a Signal group chat to discuss classified military intelligence ahead of a military strike in Yemen while inadvertently adding a journalist, and now the Pentagon’s inspector general has released its report on the mess. The results of Steven Stebbins’ eight-month-long investigation found that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not comply with DoD policies by “using a nonapproved commercially available messaging application to send nonpublic DoD information.”

    • Site36 ☛ Nihilistic Violence: Warning of Europe's New Terror Threat

      Teenagers and young adults commit murders for online fame, apparently driven by hatred of society. The EU’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator urgently calls for measures. Is this right-wing terrorism?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Bulgaria protests: 'Gen Z won't stay silent!'

      The anger was obvious on social media, where topics such as democracy, corruption in Bulgaria, low wages for young doctors (who are leaving the country en masse) and the lack of press freedom began trending.

      High-profile singers, actors and influencers began calling on people to show their discontent and take part in the protest.

    • France24 ☛ Russian neo-Nazi group 'Rusich' regularly posts images of war crimes

      Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group Rusich took to Telegram in mid-November to post a photo of one of its fighters posing in front of three bodies of Ukrainian soldiers. It is thought to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of war crimes committed by this group, which is currently deployed on the Ukrainian front.

    • SBS ☛ Should adults opt in to switch off their social media algorithm, as kids get banned?

      Two former Australian prime ministers have thrown their support behind a campaign urging the government to give social media users more control over the content they see.

      Malcolm Turnbull has backed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese from the group Teach Us Consent, which calls on the government to "Fix our Feeds" by requiring platforms to offer an opt-in feature that allows Australians to switch algorithms on and off.

    • Lionel Dricot ☛ Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?

      In this case, we are dealing with a conscious design decision by the developers. Being pretty is more important than transmitting messages.

      Technically, this means that a Pixelfed user P will think that he follows someone but will miss most of the content. On the opposite, the sender, for example a Mastodon user M, will believe that P has received his message because M follows him.

      This is a grave abuse of the protocol: messages are silently dropped. It stands against everything the Fediverse is trying to do: allow users to communicate. My experience with open protocols allows me to say that it is a critical problem and that it cannot be tolerated. Would you settle for a mail provider which silently drop all emails you receive if they contain the letter "P"?

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysian victim speaks of scam by ‘friend’, torture in Cambodia

      Some 700 others are still trapped there.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • It's FOSS ☛ Swiss Data Protection Group Says US Cloud Giants Can't Meet Privacy Standards

      Lack of end-to-end encryption makes international cloud services unsuitable, privatim says.

    • EDRI ☛ When data relate to us?

      The EDPS vs. Single Resolution Board judgment goes to the heart of the EU’s fundamental right to data protection, shaping how artificial intelligence, data spaces and so-called privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) will be governed in practice. The ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) arrives at a crucial time to reiterate what counts as personal data, reinforcing the importance of the protection that the GDPR was designed to guarantee.

    • It's FOSS ☛ There is No Future for Online Safety Without Privacy and Security

      Alexander Linton of the Session Technology Foundation on building decentralized messaging and why platform-wide content moderation is impractical on encrypted platforms.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Victims in South Korea to get real-time location of stalkers

      The revision will share the exact location of stalkers if they get too close to their victim.

    • EFF ☛ After Years of Controversy, the EU’s Chat Control Nears Its Final Hurdle: What to Know

      But here comes the rub: first, the Council’s position allows for “voluntary” detection, where tech platforms can scan personal messages that aren’t end-to-end encrypted. Unlike in the U.S., where there is no comprehensive federal privacy law, voluntary scanning is not technically legal in the EU, though it’s been possible through a derogation set to expire in 2026. It is unclear how this will play out over time, though we are concerned that this approach to voluntary scanning will lead to private mass-scanning of non-encrypted services and might limit the sorts of secure communication and storage services big providers offer. With limited transparency and oversight, it will be difficult to know how services approach this sort of detection.

    • EFF ☛ EU's New Digital Package Proposal Promises Red Tape Cuts but Guts GDPR Privacy Rights

      The GDPR is the most comprehensive model for privacy legislation around the world. While it is far from perfect and suffers from uneven enforcement, complexities and certain administrative burdens, the omnibus package is full of bad and confusing ideas that, on balance, will significantly weaken privacy protections for users in the name of cutting red tape.

      It contains at least one good idea: improving consent rules so users can automatically set consent preferences that will apply across all sites. But much as we love limiting cookie fatigue, it’s not worth the price users will pay if the rest of the proposal is adopted. The EC needs to go back to the drawing board if it wants to achieve the goal of simplifying EU regulations without gutting user privacy.

      Let’s break it down.

    • Techdirt ☛ A Surveillance Mandate Disguised As Child Safety: Why The GUARD Act Won’t Keep Us Safe

      The GUARD Act may look like a child-safety bill, but in practice it’s an age-gating mandate that could be imposed on nearly every public-facing AI chatbot—from customer-service bots to search-engine assistants. The GUARD Act could force countless AI companies to collect sensitive identity data, chill online speech, and block teens from using the digital tools that they rely on every day.

      EFF has warned for years that age-verification laws endanger free expression, privacy, and competition. There are legitimate concerns about transparency and accountability in AI, but the GUARD Act’s sweeping mandates are not the solution.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Palantir quietly lands in Education Department through foreign funding portal 

      Palantir is expanding its reach into the Education Department, where the data analytics and software giant is helping develop the agency’s new portal for universities across the country to report foreign donations.

      The quiet move marks the technology company’s latest expansion into federal government work, particularly in data management services.

      An Education Department spokesperson confirmed Palantir was involved as a subcontractor for its revamped foreign funding portal, which is set to be rolled out early next month.

    • The Register UK ☛ Palantir aims to help energy companies meet AI power crunch

      Palantir announced the project Thursday morning, describing its objective with Chain Reaction as a complete rethink of the software stack underlying American energy infrastructure.

    • LibreNews ☛ How we lost the fight to Chat Control

      If you read this article you'll learn a lot about how weird and complex the European Union is. Ah, and everything about Chat Control too.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ EU “Chat Control” Twist: Commissioner Sides with Parliament Over Governments – Boost for European Parliament’s Strong Mandate

      Just days before the start of the decisive “Trilogue” negotiations on the controversial Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse (CSAM), known by critics as “Chat Control,” the political tide in Brussels has turned. During a hearing in the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) today, the new EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Magnus Brunner, surprised MEPs by stating his preference for the European Parliament’s negotiating mandate over the draft law adopted by EU governments (the Council). This statement provides massive backing for the Parliament’s Chief Negotiator, Javier Zarzalejos (EPP), who has united an unusually broad coalition ranging from the Left to the Right behind his position.

    • Greg Morris ☛ Interoperability Is The Feature

      So I made a choice. Privacy for functionality. Ideals for tools that work. Data for an assistant that assists. That's the trade. Some people make it without thinking. I made it knowing exactly what I was giving up.

    • NYOB ☛ ‘Pay or Okay’ study: Users prefer a tracking-free “third option”

      So-called ‘Pay or Okay’ systems are on the rise in Europe. Instead of giving users a choice to either accept or reject ad tracking, Pay or Okay systems require a payment if you want to refuse to give your “consent”. This nudges 99.9% of users to consent, even if they actually don’t want to do so. Given the upcoming guidelines by the European Data Protection Board on this highly controversial approach, noyb has commissioned a study about user choices.

    • The Age AU ☛ Australia teen social media ban: Facial age verification: Can it be fooled and how safe is it?

      Though we’ve had a full year to contemplate the idea of age-restricted social media platforms, in some ways it feels as though certain questions are only being asked and answered now, with less than a week to go until Australia’s world-first laws come into effect. And foremost in the minds of many is the idea of facial age verification.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's Grok AI Is Doxxing Home Addresses of Everyday People

      And it turns out that the foulmouthed bot isn’t just doxxing celebrities: a Futurism review found that the free web version of Grok will, with extremely minimal prompting, provide accurate residential addresses for non-public figures — a feature that could easily assist stalking, harassment, and other dangerous types of behavior.

    • EDRI ☛ When data relate to us?

      The right to data protection, enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, hinges on one question: what counts as information “about a person”?

      Courts have repeatedly tackled this issue as technology evolves, making it easier to collect, link, or disguise information that still affects individuals. Each ruling has pushed back against attempts to narrow the definition of personal data. The recent Single Resolution Board (SRB) case continues this trend.

  • Confidentiality

    • Christophe Brocas ☛ ACME, a brief history of one of the protocols which has changed the Internet Security

      I would like to share with you this article I wrote about the ACME protocol, which I “fell in love with” about ten years ago. It is for me a way to give back to this fantastic Free Software and Open Protocols developers community.

      This article is about the roots, the conception, the standardization, the relation with its ecosystem and the evolution challenges faced by the ACME protocol.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Germany news: Police raid properties linked to bomb threats

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean Parliament hosts ‘dark tour’ to revisit martial law sites on anniversary

    The martial law crisis was one of the worst political ones in a country seen as a democratic success story.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] US envoy urges Sudan rivals to accept ceasefire plan

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-29 [Older] German firms split on how to deal with far-right AfD

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Nigeria: 10 kidnapped in Kwara as gang seizures continue

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Louvre heist: Police arrest four more suspects

  • France24 ☛ Sudan: Following RSF attack on Zamzam, Amnesty International calls for investigation into war crimes

    Rights group Amnesty International is calling for a war crimes investigation over a large-scale attack by Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on a refugee camp earlier this year. Amnesty alleges that the RSF, fighting Sudan's army since April 2023, "deliberately killed civilians, took hostages, pillaged and destroyed mosques, schools and health clinics" during its April attack on Zamzam, the largest refugee camp in North Darfur. For in-depth analysis, a deeper perspective, and to expound on the findings in the Amnesty report, Nadia Massih welcomes Niki Frederiek, Crisis Researcher at Amnesty International.

  • The Straits Times ☛ S. Korean President Lee mulls over visit to Japan in mid-January: Sources

    If realised, the visit will be symbolic of a recent improvement in bilateral ties.

  • Egypt receives first Hanwha K9 self-propelled howitzers

    The Egyptian military has taken delivery of its first K9 155 mm self-propelled howitzers from South Korea’s Hanwha [...]

  • ADF ☛ Military Drones Face Barriers in Africa

    In recent years, Africa’s militaries have gone on a drone-buying binge, stocking their arsenals with unmanned aerial vehicles from Turkey, China and elsewhere. However, new research suggests that those weapons are less effective than expected, especially given the continent’s sprawling spaces, fickle weather and diverse terrain.

  • ADF ☛ Decades Later, China’s ‘Go Out’ Policy Fuels Ghana’s Galamsey Crisis

    Despite a national crackdown on illegal gold mining in Ghana, the practice, locally known as “galamsey,” continues to contribute to the annual loss of billions of dollars. The mining is being driven by a combination of factors that includes depressed local economic conditions, scarce jobs, and lax enforcement.

  • New York Times ☛ Taiwan’s Opposition Leader, Once for Independence, Turns Toward China

    She says Taiwan must embrace its Chinese heritage to avoid war. Her critics say she wants to steer the island into Beijing’s orbit.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China massing military ships across region in show of maritime force, sources say

    The operations are said to exceed a mass naval deployment in 2024 that prompted Taiwan to raise its alert level.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Japan stiffens defence resolve to protect long-term interests amid row with China

    The public backs PM Sanae Takaichi's moves to make Japan more militarily formidable.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ South Korea shouldn’t take sides in China, Japan spat, President Lee says

    South Korea’s leader said Wednesday that his country wouldn’t take sides in an escalating war of words between Japan and China, calling for the two sides to “coexist”. Tokyo and Beijing have been locked in a dispute after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that Tokyo could intervene militarily should China invade Taiwan.

  • The Strategist ☛ US–China trade war traps China in structural imbalance spiral

    The five-year economic plan that the Chinese government issued in late October made clear that industrial investment and indigenous innovation will remain the centrepiece of the country’s strategic agenda.

  • New York Times ☛ Visiting Turkey and Lebanon, Pope Leo Echoed Francis’s Message, Not His Style

    Traveling through the Mideast, Leo XIV channeled many of his predecessor’s messages. Leo’s deliberate manner differed from Francis.

  • Press Gazette ☛ GB News pays substantial damages to Islamic Relief over false terrorism claim

  • US Navy Times ☛ Admiral says there was no ‘kill them all’ order in boat attack

    A Navy admiral told lawmakers Thursday that there was no “kill them all” order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth but grave questions and concerns remain as Congress scrutinizes an attack that killed two survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug boat in international waters near Venezuela.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Pentagon seeks to acquire, rapidly field over 300,000 small drones

    On Tuesday, the Pentagon released an open call to industry to rapidly obtain and deploy over 300,000 small one-way-attack drones — with the Pentagon hoping to put them into the field at such a pace that operators can learn to use them within two hours.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ D-Day vet who moved to Normandy in final years dies at 101

    “As the only Indian boy in a class of 40 students, he crossed the river by ferry or canoe, or walked across the ice in the winter,” the site says. Drafted after high school, he was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, known as the Big Red One. On June 6, 1944, he was on the first wave of assaulters on Omaha Beach.

    He remained on the frontlines for almost a year, including combat in the Battle of the Bulge, until he was captured and spent nearly a month in a German prison camp, before being liberated in the war’s final days, he told the 2017 interviewer.

  • Science News ☛ Chatbots spew facts and falsehoods to sway voters

    Briefly chatting with an AI moved potential voters in three countries toward their less preferred candidate, researchers report December 4 in Nature. That finding held true even in the lead-up to the contentious 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, with pro-Trump bots pushing Harris voters in his direction, and vice versa.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Chatbots Are Surprisingly Effective at Swaying Voters

    The bots were effective. After talking with a pro-Trump bot, one in 35 people who initially said they would not vote for Trump flipped to saying they would. The number who flipped after talking with a pro-Harris bot was even higher, at one in 21. A month later, when participants were surveyed again, much of the effect persisted. The results suggest that AI “creates a lot of opportunities for manipulating people’s beliefs and attitudes,” David Rand, a senior author on the study, which was published today in Nature, told me.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Is This the End of Kids on Social Media?

    In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk with Inman Grant about how the law will work and how she will enforce it. We hear from Australian teens who will lose their accounts just around the start of the country’s summer break, with its potential for maximum boredom. We also talk with Jo Orlando, an Australian researcher who studies young people and technology and who doesn’t think the ban is the answer.

    The following is a transcript of the episode: [...]

  • The Record ☛ Amid rising threats, NATO holds its largest-ever cyberdefense exercise | The Record from Recorded Future News

    This year’s drill saw 29 allies, alongside seven partner nations, coordinate their responses to seven major storylines — all of which are designed to stay below NATO’s Article 5 threshold for collective defense — at Estonia’s national cyber range, CR14, established and supported by the country’s Ministry of Defence. It was NATO's largest-ever cyberdefense exercise.

  • Mike Brock ☛ A Note From The Circus: The People Say No

    Make no mistake about what we’re witnessing: an active coup attempt against the constitutional order. Trump posts on social media demanding that Letitia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff be prosecuted. Not because of evidence—because they investigated him, criticized him, held him accountable under law.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Palantir CEO Says Making War Crimes Constitutional Would Be Good for Business

  • Gizmodo ☛ Palantir CEO Says Making War Crimes Constitutional Would Be Good for Business

    At the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Karp was asked about the worries over the unconstitutionality of the boat strikes.

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Exclusive: Finnish president warns Europe that US likely talked with Russia while negotiating with Ukraine

    Stubb delivered the message during a conversation among top European leaders earlier this week, shortly after U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Dec. 2.

    The discussion reflected growing concern in European capitals over Washington's posture as the latest peace push moves forward.

  • Meduza ☛ E.U. blacklisting over ‘money laundering and terrorist financing’ pushes Russia further into pariah status

    The European Union plans to add Russia to its list of countries with a high risk of money laundering and terrorist financing, Politico reported this week. Once official, the decision will exacerbate Russia’s international pariah status, jeopardizing investment and trade flows that emerged in response to Western sanctions against Moscow after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Meduza spoke with anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov to understand what Russia’s inclusion on the E.U.’s blacklist will mean for the Kremlin, Russian businesses, and ordinary citizens.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump's Pardon Abuses Are a Means to Legalize Corruption

    But you might not have heard that his boss just pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. prison for abusing his office by leading what prosecutors called “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”

    If the cognitive dissonance gives you whiplash, that’s because you’re paying attention.

  • BoingBoing ☛ White House renovation donors refuse disclosure requests

    How much did these billionaires give? Who approached them? Are they expecting something in return? Are they lobbying for other perks?

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Ukraine: Germany says Russia resisting negotiated peace

      Germany says Russia not moving to 'negotiating mode' on Ukraine European Commission presents plan to use Russian assets for Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia receives new airspace surveillance radars

      On Wednesday, the National Armed Forces base in Lielvārde received Giraffe 1X airspace surveillance radars, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) told the LETA news agency.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Atlantic ☛ How to Read the Epstein Files Like an Expert

    Sometime in the next 15 days, the Justice Department is set to release a huge cache of files related to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The release, mandated under a law passed by Congress last month, has been the subject of a great deal of anticipation—but not a lot of clarity.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Lawmakers press for Epstein files briefing, as Dems release photos of his private island

    The U.S. House overwhelmingly approved legislation, 427-1, to compel the Justice Department to publicly release the material. The Senate agreed unanimously. President Donald Trump, after months of calling the files a “hoax,” signed the bill into law on Nov. 19, starting the clock for the Dec. 19 release deadline.

    Epstein surrounded himself with influential politicians and celebrities, and had a well-documented friendship with Trump.

• Environment

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump administration adopts plan to pump more water in California

    Officials at the California Department of Water Resources have said the increase in federal pumping also could force reductions in what the state can deliver via the other main water system, the State Water Project, which sends water from the Delta to Southern California’s cities.

  • Vox ☛ The scourge of indoor recess

    But parents and advocates around the country say that, too often, kids are now spending recess in their classrooms, where they don’t get the full benefits that outdoor play can provide.

    In Western states, extreme heat is increasingly keeping kids indoors, said Allison Poulos, a professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions. In one study conducted from July to September — the hottest months of the year in Arizona — her team found that kids were inside for recess about 40 percent of the time.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Penguins likely starved to death en masse: Populations off South Africa may have fallen 95% in just 8 years

    In fact, on two of the most important breeding colonies of the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus)—Dassen Island and Robben Island—some 95% of the birds that bred in 2004 were estimated to have died over the next eight years as a result of food scarcity.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Deadly floods hit southern Thailand after heavy rains

  • Energy/Transportation

    • New York Times ☛ South Korea Says the U.S. Agreed to Help It Secure Fuel for Reactors

      President Lee Jae Myung reaffirmed wanting to build nuclear-powered submarines at home, despite Hell Toupée’s suggestion that they be built in the United States.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Japan debates nuclear policy amid rising threats

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] India flights impacted by Ethiopia volcano ash cloud

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] China sends replacement transport to Tiangong space station

    • The Straits Times ☛ Bitcoin miners hunted after stealing $1.4 billion of electricity from Malaysia grid

      About 14,000 illicit mining sites have been recorded over the past five years.

    • The Indiana Capital Chronicle ☛ Racing is not winning for Indiana data centers

      But the biggest pressure of all comes from the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and the data centers needed to run it. By 2035, AI-driven data centers are expected to add the electricity demand equivalent or greater than building a second Indianapolis, a second Fort Wayne, a second Gary, and a second Evansville combined.

      Take the planned data center campus in New Carlisle for example. It alone is projected to use 2.2 gigawatts of power — almost 10% of Indiana’s entire current electricity demand.

    • US Navy Times ☛ VA kills ‘Boondoggle’ Biden plan to put EV chargers at medical centers

      In a Nov. 19 release, the VA made clear its opposition to federal funding for green energy programs in general and charging stations in particular, although the Trump administration in August was forced under court order to release up to $5 billion approved by Congress for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program to build a nationwide network of charging stations along major highways.

    • Vox ☛ Trump says cutting climate rules will save you money. It’s actually costing you more.

      In July, the Environmental Protection Agency began undoing a foundational legal basis that lets the agency limit climate pollution from cars. Without it, the EPA has far less power to require automakers to manufacture cleaner vehicles, which hampers efforts to reduce one of the single biggest sources of carbon emissions.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Bill Gates-backed nuclear reactor gets construction approval in hurry

      However, as the result of political pressure from both Congress and the White House, NRC staff curtailed their review and issued a safety evaluation nine months early, conforming to the 18-month review timeline mandated by President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14300, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ We tested Europe’s luxurious new ‘business-class’ sleeper bus between Amsterdam and Zurich

      “Flying is one of the main drivers of climate change. We wanted to design an alternative that people would actually want to use,” the company’s co-founder and CEO, Luca Bortolani, told me before Twiliner’s launch. Their solution is a seat that turns into a genuinely comfortable bed. Manufactured by Greater Manchester-based Airline Services Interiors, it’s similar to a business class plane seat.

    • El País ☛ TikTok’s first data center in Latin America will be in Brazil and will run entirely on wind power

      TikTok’s data center in Brazil will be powered by wind energy from wind farms that are also under construction, according to the company. The company explains that it will use a closed-loop water cooling system for the supercomputers and will not draw power from the electrical grid, “avoiding impacts on the local supply” and “reinforcing its commitment to the energy transformation and decarbonization of the global economy.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysian villagers help keep lost elephant calf safe

      A few days before, the same calf had been caught in a buffalo trap not far from the settlement.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Panda pair Chen Xing and Xiao Yue settling into new home in Malaysia; distinct personalities emerge

      Chen Xing is the more outgoing of the two, while Xiao Yue is described as gentle and quiet.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] France's first giant Pandas head back to China

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Nigeria: Millions to face severe hunger as WFP funds run out

    • NYPost ☛ European country known for stunning women suffers drought of men — forcing would-be brides to ‘hire’ husbands for housework

      "All my friends have gone abroad and found boyfriends there."

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysian PM Anwar’s former aide Shamsul Iskandar claims trial to four counts of bribery

    If convicted, he faces up to 20 years' prison time and a fine.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia charges PM's former aide with receiving bribes

    Malaysian authorities on Thursday charged a former top aide to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim with receiving bribes, increasing scrutiny on the premier's pledge to crack down on corruption.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysian businessman pleads not guilty to bribing PM Anwar’s former aide

    Albert Tei was accused of bribing Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin on four separate occasions.

  • CS Monitor ☛ A biographer mines the life of Pooh-tin Jinping’s father for clues to China today

    Joseph Torigian talks about writing “The Party’s Interests Come First,” which profiles the father of Chinese leader Pooh-tin Jinping.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Xi courts Macron in diplomatic effort to isolate Japanese PM

    China has been seeking backup from France in its recent dispute with Japan over Taiwan’s status.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Macron meets Pooh-tin in Beijing, in renewed pitch for European strategic autonomy

    China welcomes such a stance as it means a Europe that is less aligned with the US.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ US layoffs this year topped 1 million, new data shows

    The cooling labor market bolsters the US Federal Reserve’s likely decision to trim interest rates next week, though sticky inflation complicates that call.

  • Linuxiac ☛ Proxmox Launches Datacenter Manager 1.0 With Rust-Powered Interface

    Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 is built on Debian 13.2, uses Linux 6.17 as the default stable kernel, includes ZFS 2.3, and is written in Rust with a new Yew-based web interface.

  • The Verge ☛ Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

    Game File reported last week that Microsoft will cease publication of its diversity and inclusion reports this year. “We are not doing a traditional report this year as we’ve evolved beyond that to formats that are more dynamic and accessible — stories, videos, and insights that show inclusion in action,” said Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s chief communications officer, in a statement to Notepad. “Our mission and commitment to our culture and values remain unchanged: empowering every person and organization to achieve more.”

  • The Verge ☛ Apple announces even more major executive turnover

    With Jackson’s retirement and Newstead coming on board, Apple is also making some organizational shifts and shifting some responsibilities to Williams’ COO replacement, Sabih Khan. As described by Apple: [...]

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Alan Dye Leaving Apple for Meta

  • Six Colors ☛ In a major coup for someone, Alan Dye leaves Apple

    So. In the spirit of not making it personal, I think it’s hard to pile all of Apple’s software design missteps over the last few years at the feet of Alan Dye. He had support from other executives. He led a whole team of designers. Corporate initiatives and priorities can lead even the most well-meaning of people into places they end up regretting.

  • The Strategist ☛ AI is already leading. The question is whether we are

    Artificial intelligence is moving faster than any governance, policy or organisational system built to contain it. For Australia’s national-security community, this is a strategic inflection point. AI is shifting from decision-support to decision-shaping, and the question facing governments is stark: will we shape this future or be shaped by it?

  • Six Colors ☛ Apple announces departure of both general counsel and environmental chief

    The revolving door at Apple Park isn’t done spinning yet. In the wake of the announcements this week of departures for both AI chief John Giannandrea and design leader Alan Dye, Apple said on Thursday that its general counsel, Katherine Adams, and vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson, would both be stepping down next year.

    The two will be replaced by a single executive: Jennifer Newstead, who most recently served as Meta’s chief legal officer.

  • Six Colors ☛ John Gruber on Alan Dye’s departure

    I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I mostly don’t link to Daring Fireball because I assume that anyone who reads Six Colors reads Daring Fireball. And if you don’t, you probably should.

    But in the wake of Alan Dye’s departure yesterday, I feel I need to explicitly link to John Gruber’s long, sourced, well-thought-out piece on the subject: [...]

  • FAIR ☛ ‘COPs Are About the Public vs. Politicians and Their Corporate Interests’: CounterSpin interview with Jean Su on COP30 narratives

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Biological Diversity’s Jean Su about challenging COP30 narratives for the November 28, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Press Gazette ☛ Dubious experts deployed by MyJobQuote published more than 600 times in UK press

    • 404 Media ☛ Scientists Are Increasingly Worried AI Will Sway Elections

      AI models can meaningfully sway voters on candidates and issues, including by using misinformation, and they are also evading detection in public surveys according to three new studies.

    • US Library of Congress ☛ Copyright Is for Kids: New Resource for Parents, Teachers, and Librarians | Copyright

      Using this refreshed resource, kids can learn what copyright is and what rights copyright owners have: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Atlantic ☛ Sam Kirchner, Stop AI’s Co-Founder, Is Missing

    Whatever the exact reason or the precise triggering event, Kirchner appears to have recently lost faith in the strategy of nonviolence, at least briefly. This alleged moment of crisis led to his expulsion from Stop AI, to a series of 911 calls placed by his compatriots, and, apparently, to his disappearance. His friends say they have been looking for him every day, but nearly two weeks have gone by with no sign of him.

  • CPJ ☛ Chinese journalist Du Bin detained for third time, held since October

    Chinese journalist Su Yutong, who is based in Berlin and familiar with the case, told CPJ she had been informed by a source that police detained Du because of a book he authored that was deemed to have “attacked state leaders.” The source did not specify which leaders or book authorities were referring to.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Germany: Chancellor Merz defends media commissioner

  • Press Gazette ☛ The Economist reveals revenue growth as Rothschild stake up for sale

    Expressions of interest being gathered for Rothschild family 27% stake in The Economist.

  • Press Gazette ☛ People Inc launch of MyRecipes proves publishers can beat LLMs

    Rich Maggiotto and Alysia Borsa say recipe content benefits from human touch.

  • The Dissenter ☛ University of Alabama Shuts Down Two Student Magazines

    The magazines, Alice Magazine and Nineteen Fifty-Six, were suspended on December 1. Alice Magazine is a fashion and wellness magazine that primarily focuses on women. Nineteen Fifty-Six is a magazine largely focused on “Black culture, Black excellence and Black student experiences at the University of Alabama.”

  • CPJ ☛ Members of Congress, CPJ, Amnesty International USA to hold press conference about Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists

    According to CPJ, at least 246 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists on record. The majority of those killed were Palestinians reporting from the occupied Gaza Strip.

  • The Walrus ☛ The Walrus Acquires Lead Podcasting

    The entire Lead Podcasting management and production team will join The Walrus Lab and merge with The Walrus Podcasts. This in-house agency work is part of a diverse, innovative business model that funds the independent journalism of The Walrus. Hollett and Cupido both welcome inquiries from brands interested in learning more about creating a podcast with this new team.

  • NPR ☛ 'New York Times' sues Pentagon over media restrictions

    That policy, unveiled in September, includes a ban on credentialed journalists reporting even unclassified material that isn't expressly approved for public consumption by Defense Department brass. The Times said the Pentagon policy represents an attempt to force reporters to rely solely upon officials for news involving the military and would unlawfully permit their punishment for failing to do so.

    The Times — and NPR — are among the organizations that chose to give up their press passes rather than agree to the policy.

  • New York Times ☛ New York Times Sues Pentagon Over First Amendment Rights

    In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, The Times argued that the Defense Department’s new policy violated the First Amendment and “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done — ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Hong Kong: Young activists suffer in silence

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Dozens of cities, states hiking minimum wages in 2026 amid federal inaction

    Though the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not increased since 2009, many state and local governments continue to increase minimums through legislation or scheduled increases tied to inflation.

    An annual report from the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit advocating for workers’ rights, found that 88 jurisdictions will raise their minimum wages by the end of 2026.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Mark Kurlansky’s ‘The Boston Way’ explores the split among abolitionists

    Kurlansky is up to something similar in “The Boston Way,” his new book about how 19th-century pacifists navigated the prospect of an American civil war to end slavery. Hundreds of books have been written about the Civil War, but Kurlansky breathes new life into the subject by taking a more novel slant. He focuses on a subset of Americans in and around Boston who saw slavery as an unmitigated evil, but were horrified by the thought that their fellow citizens might try to settle the matter by killing each other.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Jo Ann Allen Boyce, Who Wrote a Book About Her Experience Integrating Clinton High School, Has Died

    Clinton High School in Tennessee was integrated in 1956, a couple of years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education that separating public school children on the basis of race was unconstitutional and a year before Little Rock Central High School was desegregated by force. Unlike the Little Rock Nine, the Clinton 12 students were not picked by community leaders for the job of desegregation. They just happened to live within the Anderson County school district at the time.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Same-sex marriage must be recognized across EU, court rules

  • ACLU ☛ Your Questions Answered: How Jury Duty Protects Your Rights

    Jury service is a civic duty as important as voting, but receives far less attention from the everyday citizens who may be called to serve.

    For many people, jury service is nothing more than something dramatized on TV. In fact, a jury summons is often a source of dread. But would people still groan at performing their civic duty if they thought about how jury service allows ordinary people to directly shape our justice system?

    The right to a jury of one’s peers is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and has always been a vital part of America’s system of checks and balances. Juries were designed to be a crucial check on government overreach. To this day, they ensure that people facing criminal or civil charges have their cases heard and decided by a group of their peers, not a few government actors.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ APNIC registry services availability during Q3 2025

    The latest measurements on APNIC’s whois, RDAP, RPKI, IRR, and rDNS are now available.

  • APNIC ☛ China reports major IPv6 growth

    Key findings from the China IPv6 Development Report (2025), released by the Expert Committee for Promoting Large-Scale IPv6 Deployment and Application.

  • Techdirt ☛ EU’s Top Court Just Made It Literally Impossible To Run A User-Generated Content Platform Legally

    With the case sent up to the CJEU, things get totally twisted, as they argue that under the GDPR, the inclusion of “sensitive personal data” in the ad suddenly makes the host a “joint controller” of the data under that law. As a controller of data, the much stricter GDPR rules on data protection now apply, and the more careful calibration of intermediary liability rules get tossed right out the window.

    And out the window, right with it, is the ability to have a functioning open [Internet].

  • Greece ☛ Fast [Internet] adoption among Cyprus enterprises nearly doubles since 2021

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • New York Times ☛ Why One Man Is Fighting for Our Right to Control Our Garage Door Openers

    A few years ago, Paul Wieland, a 44-year-old information technology professional living in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, was wrapping up a home renovation when he ran into a hiccup. He wanted to be able to control his new garage door with his smartphone. But the options available, including a product called MyQ, required connecting to a company’s [Internet] servers.

    He believed a “smart” garage door should operate only over a local Wi-Fi network to protect a home’s privacy, so he started building his own system to plug into his garage door. By 2022, he had developed a prototype, which he named RATGDO, for Rage Against the Garage Door Opener.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Porsche Cars In Russia Disabled By Vehicle Tracking Failure

    Hundreds of Porsche vehicles across Russia have abruptly stopped functioning, triggering concern over potential security flaws in modern connected-car technology. Reports circulating inside the country, by numerous frustrated posts on social media, describe Porsche models that suddenly refuse to start, leaving owners stranded and searching for answers.

  • Los Campesinos ☛ Here’s how much money Los Camp! make from streaming… - Los Campesinos!

    It being Streaming Stat Season, I thought now would be a good time to offer a detailed breakdown of how much money we make from our music being streamed.

    In doing so, I don’t intend to draw any conclusions or make any judgements, but rather just to present the data for you to consider however you wish.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Court House News ☛ Credit agencies must face some antitrust medical debt reporting claims

  Experian Information Solutions, Equifax and TransUnion successfully had Sherman Act and Cartwright Act claims by two plaintiffs, Dr. Derrick Adams and Cape Emergency Physicians, dismissed.

  However, a Sherman Act claim by AmeriFinancial Solutions remains intact, as do claims of tortious interference with existing contracts in both California and New Jersey.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Blanco Brown Calls Out 'Walk My Walk' Over Alleged Infringement

    Did Breaking Rust “steal and borrow” from a human creator to pump out “Walk My Walk”? Artist Blanco Brown believes so, and he’s fired back by releasing a cover of the (relative) AI hit.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Empowers Hollywood in Race to Block “Wicked: For Good” Piracy

    Australia's Federal Court has responded to an urgent request by the major Hollywood studios, Netflix and Apple, to protect the movie “Wicked: For Good” from some of the world's most notorious pirate streaming sites. After issuing an initial blocking order in November, an unprecedented second was issued two weeks later. Targeting “Additional Urgent Access Means”, the order empowers the studios to tackle pirate site countermeasures immediately, without further recourse to the Court.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ DDoS Guard: LaLiga's Piracy Blocks Test Whether Anyone Will Protect the Internet

    Internet infrastructure company DDoS-Guard is concerned by the power granted to Spain's LaLiga in its fight against piracy. Describing the scale of over-blocking as "astonishing", Dmitry Nikonov, Head of Web Application Protection, believes that LaLiga is becoming a private regulator, one with the authority to interfere with internet infrastructure. "Football matches have become the pretext for a large-scale internet experiment, testing whether there is anyone to protect its freedom."